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Mel had always had trouble sleeping; had always been a night owl, but it had gotten much worse ever since she started working in the ER. The past month she had barely slept at all.
She tried yoga, went for runs before going to bed to exhaust herself, and watched ASMR videos, but they just made her want to cut her ears off.
She drank chamomile tea and bought new, expensive black-out curtains. She even listened to those very boring and pretentious medical podcasts that Langdon loved. Still, she couldn’t sleep. She tossed and turned until she either fell into some weird half-slumber or she simply gave up completely and just spent the rest of the night catching up on medical journals.
She tried to hide her exhaustion the best she could, drinking some of Langdon’s redbulls and even putting on some concealer to hide the dark circles under her eyes, which were visible even though she wore glasses. Everyone working in the Pitt looked tired and frazzled, but she suspected no one looked as tired as she did.
“You okay, kid?” Dana asked eventually, confirming Mel’s suspicions, as they stood in the ambulance bay, waiting for a college kid who had gotten thrown off his bike on his way home from night class. Langdon was standing some ways away from them smoking a cigarette, a bad habit he had picked up in rehab. Dana looked at Mel with concern in her eyes. “You look exhausted. More exhausted than usual, I mean.”
Mel twisted her gloved hands. “No, I’m fine, I just had trouble sleeping last night.”
“Have you tried smoking? That always works for me. And Langdon, apparently.” Dana winked at Mel’s expression. “That was a joke.”
“Oh,” Mel laughed. “No, I haven’t tried that yet.”
Mel could feel Langdon looking at her as he was putting out his cigarette before walking towards them, but before he could say anything the ambulance pulled up and then they were busy for the rest of the evening.
He brought it up later, when they were sitting in the break room just the two of them, eating cold pepperoni pizza from the staff fridge. It wasn’t too bad; at 2 a.m., everything tasted good.
Mel had gotten to know Langdon really well over the last year and a half since he came back from rehab. She didn’t know how it had happened, but somehow he had become her friend. He would come over every other Friday for movie night and either brought takeout or cooked pasta pomodoro, which was the only dish he could make, according to himself. He always brought his dog along with him, a fairly untrained and unruly but very sweet goldendoodle that Becca loved as if he were her own. On the weekends he had his kids, he sometimes asked if Mel and Becca wanted to come along on the various outings they went on. It was nice. It also meant that Langdon was now far nosier about Mel’s personal life than he used to be.
“So, about what Dana said earlier …” he began, brushing some crumbs from his scrubs, “you really do look tired.” He was looking at her in a sort of evaluating way he usually reserved for his patients, his blue eyes boring into her.
Mel shook her head. “It’s just stress. I’m having trouble sleeping and nothing works. I even listened to that podcast you recommended.”
Langdon laughed at that. “I also used to have trouble sleeping. The trick is to find what relaxes you.”
Mel frowned. “What do you do to relax?”
He grinned impishly. “You really want to know?”
She nodded.
“Well, it used to be drugs.”
“Oh,” Mel said. She always was a little thrown by how easily and lightly he always talked about his addiction around her, but she liked that he felt comfortable enough to do so. “Right.”
“Now, it’s sex.”
She flushed. “Oh.”
This really was a middle-of-a-calm-night-shift type of conversation. When it was hushed, when the rest of the world sort of fell away. When conversations crossed lines they usually didn’t.
He laughed, blue eyes twinkling. “Sorry, was that inappropriate? I was mostly joking.” He shrugged. “All I’m saying is, whenever I was stressed in med school, and Abby was stressed from grad school, which was all the time, pretty much, we’d have sex. It’s how we ended up with Tanner.” He sounded fond as he talked about it, like how even after he’d gotten divorced, it was still a good memory.
Mel almost couldn’t believe they were having this conversation. Her face felt warm and she pressed her cold hands to her cheeks to make her blush look less obvious. She didn’t know much, or anything, really, about Langdon’s sex life and she was pretty sure she didn’t want to know. She knew friends were supposed to be able to talk about this kind of stuff, but for some reason it felt so foreign to talk about it with him. Still, she tried.
“And now, after the divorce? Do you still …?” Her face heated even more and she couldn’t finish the sentence. Luckily he clocked her meaning anyway.
“What, get laid?” He laughed at the look on her face. “I’m not a saint, Mel. But no, not as much as before, obviously. I mean, there have been a couple of women, but that’s it. Well, maybe more than a couple.” He shrugged and smiled in a way that made him look a little sheepish but also pleased with himself. A little smug. He cocked his head to the side as he observed her.
“Does that make you think less of me?”
“No!” She frowned. “No. Of course not.”
He nodded, taking another bite of his pizza. “Good. Some of our co-workers probably would.”
“Would what?”
“Think less of me.”
“Well, they shouldn’t. You’re an adult and you’re divorced and it’s just …” she swallowed and avoided looking at him before lowering her voice, “it’s just sex.”
“Right. Just sex.” He eyed her thoughtfully for a moment before giving his head a shake.
“My point is, it’s a good way to relax. You should try it, if you want to and nothing else works.”
“I’ll think about it.”
The truth was, Mel hadn’t dated at all since she came to Pittsburgh. She’d downloaded a couple of apps, but it all felt so painfully awkward, so much harder than when she was in college and med school and had exclusively dated guys she’d met in class. That way, she’d known they always had a subject in common to talk about to avoid awkward silences, and she’d also known that the men she dated weren’t particularly stupid or uneducated. The thought of meeting someone the traditional way, like going out to a bar and hooking up with a stranger, was out of the question. Just thinking about it made her feel panicky.
Sex had also never been something she prioritized. Mel didn’t think it was all that it was cracked up to be. It could be nice, but most of the time it felt like something she was expected to love, but in actuality only felt lukewarm about. In her opinion, sex was kind of like scratching your back, or sneezing.
She didn’t mention any of this to Langdon, because she could imagine the look on his face if she did. Instead, she cleared her throat, hoping he would get the hint and stop talking about this, and said, “Anyway. Thank you for your help.”
He grinned. “Anytime. Let me know how it goes.”
Then he handed her another slice of cold pizza and mercifully changed the subject.
***
It had been a very, very bad shift; one of those that made Mel just want to quit emergency medicine altogether. Pittsburgh had been hit by a bad storm that brought mayhem upon the ER. Three of her patients had died and she hadn’t even had time to go to the bathroom or eat all day.
Her sleeping schedule was also worse than ever; instead of getting at least a few hours she was now barely sleeping at all. No matter how exhausted she was when she came home, she would lie awake in her bed just staring at her ceiling, tossing and turning, replaying her day on a loop. It made her bad at her job and she was at her wits’ end on how to deal with it.
The rain was still coming down hard by the time their shift ended, so Langdon offered to drive her home and she accepted gratefully. She wasn’t in any state to drive herself. They were both quiet on the drive there, lost in thought.
He pulled into one of the parking spaces on the street outside of her apartment building and killed the engine. It was dark both outside and inside the car. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see him observing her.
“You look tired.” His voice was soft.
“I usually do,” she said tersely.
“Still not sleeping well, huh?”
She sighed. “No.”
They were silent for a long time. She was about to thank him for the ride and get out of the car when he cleared his throat and said, “Have you thought any more about what I suggested? Using, uh, sex to try to relax?”
Mel immediately felt tense. The truth was, she had. In the weeks that had passed when she had felt increasingly exhausted and desperate she had thought about it more and more often. But again, the prospect of actually finding someone to have sex with felt insurmountable.
She didn’t admit any of this out loud. Instead, she replied, “No, not really.”
“Well, you know” he looked away from her, wiping an invisible speck of dust from his dashboard. “Masturbation also works.”
Mel’s stomach flipped and she flushed, her face going hot. For some reason, talking about masturbation with Langdon felt different than talking about sex.
“Yeah, I usually don’t …” Her face turned a deeper shade of red. “I mean, I usually can’t …” She didn’t want to explain to him that in her experience, masturbation, much like sex, wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.
“Right.” He cleared his throat again, coughing a little. “I mean.” He took a deep breath. “I’m just saying. I could help you. If you want.” He was rubbing the back of his head, still not really looking at her. “Maybe not, you know, actual sex, but there are other things I could … help you with.”
Mel’s throat had gone very dry. “Like what?” It came out like a squeak.
“You know. I could – I could help you come.” He finally looked at her when he said it, his voice soft. His expression was carefully blank.
Mel’s heart skipped a beat, stuttered, and then started to beat very fast. Oh. Oh.
The air in the car suddenly felt very thick, like someone had thrown a blanket over it.
“That’s what friends do, right? Help each other out?” He was smiling a little as he said it, like he was being sarcastic, but it did nothing to dissipate the tension. He had a look in his eyes Mel had never seen before.
Mel nodded shakily. “Okay.” She said it without really thinking. Her voice sounded breathless to her own ears.
“Okay?” There was surprise in his voice and he raised his eyebrows, like he hadn’t really expected her to agree.
“Yeah. Okay.”
He nodded thoughtfully then swallowed. “Okay. Becca’s not home is she?”
Mel knew he knew she wasn’t. When Mel worked the day shift on the weekdays, Becca spent both her days and nights and the center. It was only on odd weekends that she came home for a full 48 hours.
Mel shook her head without looking at him and unclipped the seatbelt, getting out of the car as he did the same. Her heart was thumping hard in her chest as they made their way up to her second floor apartment. The way he was quietly following her and then looming behind her as she tried to unlock her door almost made her feel like she was prey.
When they got inside she didn’t turn the hallway light on as they both took their wet jackets and shoes off. Mel felt as if she was doing things on autopilot; there was a loud buzzing in her ears and her muscles felt stiff and uncoordinated. Did she make her bed this morning? Was her room a mess? She couldn’t remember. She finally looked at Langdon and found him already looking back at her, his face once again unreadable.
“Bedroom?” She tried to keep her voice neutral.
He nodded, smiling a little. “Sure.”
He had been in her bedroom before, but it felt different now. Her lava lamp glowing orange and pink on her bedside table was the only source of light in the room. The rain was beating softly against the window, a soothing pitter-patter. Mel’s heart was hammering as she looked up at Langdon.
“Should we … um. Should we kiss?” She felt silly for asking, but she had no idea what he expected of her.
He shrugged, looking amused. “We could. If you want.”
“Uh-huh.” She nodded lamely. “Sure.”
He was so tall, she had to crane her neck to look up at him. He lifted his right hand and brushed the pad of his thumb over her bottom lip; a tiny, gentle movement. She could see his jaw clench like it always did when he was in pain or when he was angry, but didn’t have time to process what that meant before he took her face in his hands, ducked down and kissed her for real.
***
It wasn’t their first kiss. They had kissed, kind of, a couple of times, but just as friends. Mel was pretty sure Langdon remembered neither of those kisses. First, there was that time at the staff holiday party at Dana’s, a few months after Langdon had gotten back from rehab and things had still been a little weird. They’d accidentally stood underneath the mistletoe in the arched doorway to Dana’s living room and everyone had been drunkenly yelling at Langdon to kiss Mel, which he did. Not quite on her cheek, but not quite on her mouth, either. It had been dry and closed-mouthed; he’d smelled like oranges and cinnamon and eggnog. When he was over he pulled back, not quite releasing her, and she had marveled at how blue his eyes looked up close, the muted lights from the Christmas tree reflecting in them. There were yellow streaks in the middle of his irises, she’d thought a bit dazedly and then she’d blushed and scolded herself for acting so ridiculous and juvenile before stepping away from him, putting some space between them.
And then there was that other time, a few months later, when he’d been drunk and called her from the bar he’d gotten kicked out from in the middle of the night. It was Valentine’s Day and it was freezing cold outside. She’d found him standing in the snow wearing only soaked-through sneakers and a light jacket, smoking and shivering.
“I di’n’t know who else to call,” he’d mumbled drunkenly once he had gotten in her car, his forehead pressed against the cool side window of her car, not looking at her. His breath fogged up the glass. “I just knew …” He swallowed wetly, like he’d been crying. “I just knew you’d pick up.”
“Oh,” Mel had said, not really knowing how she was supposed to respond to that, or feel about it. “Um. Well. Here I am.”
“Yeah.” He peered at her, expression brightening a little. “Here you are.”
She felt bad for him and let him sleep it off on her couch. He’d stood sort of swaying on his feet watching her lay out a pair of sweatpants that were too big for her and would probably fit him, two blankets and a pillow on the four-seater where he’d already watched Elf many a Friday with her and Becca.
Mel cleared her throat when she was done, turning to go into her bedroom. “Well. Good night, then.”
“Hey Mel,” he’d said, reaching out and loosely pulling her into him in a sort of side hug. Her heart had hammered against her chest and she’d suddenly felt warm all over. His voice had been low and raspy and hot against her ear. “Thank you for always taking such good care of me. I owe you one.”
Then he pressed a soft kiss against her temple before letting her go and stumbling over to the sofa, collapsing ungracefully on the blankets, long legs hanging over the edge. He was snoring within a minute.
The next day he had looked pale and awful, feeling obviously ashamed and hungover, and they never talked about it again. But after that they became best friends. Maybe she wasn’t his best friend, but other than Becca, obviously, he was Mel’s. It was like that last barrier had been broken, which made Mel feel happy. She hadn’t had a best friend since she was a little kid, before everyone figured out that there was something that was not quite right about her. She was too eager to please, too unable to understand certain social situations. She was just … too much. With Langdon, she never felt like that.
Sometimes she’d thought about those kisses in the many months that had passed since they’d happened; then she had felt embarrassed for doing so. The kisses had both been friendly, nothing worth analyzing; nothing note-worthy about them, especially compared to the things Santos sometimes told her that she’d gotten up to whenever she went clubbing on the rare weekends she was off work. So, like Mel often did when it came to uncomfortable emotions, she pushed the memories of those kisses aside and tried to forget about them.
***
This kiss, however, felt different from the two kisses that came before. The first touch of his lips on hers nearly caused her to jump out of her skin.
“Easy,” he mumbled against her mouth, his hand coming up to cradle the back of her head, fingers weaving into her wavy hair, let loose from its braid.
She let out a little “oh!” and he deepened the kiss then, tilting his head and pushing his tongue into her mouth. He groaned, and the sound of it shot a lightning bolt of desire straight to her center.
He stepped forward suddenly which forced her to step back, her knees hitting her bed, losing her balance, and he didn’t stop, kept pushing until she was lying on her back; he hooked his arms under her ass and ribs and lifted her further up on the bed. He was so warm and it felt so good; the way he folded his body over hers, the weight of him pressing her down into her soft mattress, grounding her there.
“You okay?” he muttered into her mouth, lifting his head to look at her. His pupils were blown and his eyelashes looked impossibly dark and long up close like this.
She nodded breathlessly. “Yeah.”
He sat up straighter, getting up on his knees, and untied her drawstring pants and pulled them over her hips, immediately and impatiently pushing apart her thighs and bending down to press a kiss to the soft inside of her calf.
She was so wet already, just from kissing, which usually never happened. He groaned deeply when he brushed his hand over her soaked underwear, pressing down on the wet patch there. The muscles in her stomach jumped at the contact and she yelped. He looked up at her slightly unbelieving, his eyes hooded, like he was seeing her for the first time.
“Fuck, Mel,” he breathed and her entire body clenched up at those words, at the way he was looking at her and the way he wasted no time and smoothly hooked his fingers into the elastic of her panties and pulled them off, tossing them on the floor.
It was almost like this was all happening to someone else: an adrenaline-fueled out of body experience. Mel could smell her own arousal in the air and she didn’t even have time to feel embarrassed about it, like she usually would.
Langdon leaned over her again and kissed her, his tongue softer against hers this time; more explorative. His hand travelled down her torso and hip, before smoothing over her thigh, leaving goosebumps in the wake of his touch. The first brush of his fingers at her bare center made her whimper, her hand grasping his bicep as he hovered above her.
“You okay? Just tell me what feels good.”
She nodded frantically. “Mhm.” She wanted to tell him that it all felt overwhelmingly good; the kissing, the weight of him, his hands all over her body, the light touch of his fingers. It all felt like too much and not enough at the same time. She was a raw nerve; exposed and vulnerable.
He nudged her knees further apart and stroked his fingers lightly over her folds, dragging his middle and ring fingers through her wetness; soft swirls that were enough to make her pant into his mouth. She clenched down on nothing and couldn’t stop a whine from escaping her, bucking impatiently against his hand, which made Langdon chuckle.
Finally, he relented and put one finger inside her and she squeezed, pulling him deeper, letting out a broken moan. She was so far gone already; when he put a second finger deep inside of her, curling them, finding the right angle, letting his thumb lightly brush her clit as he went, she saw stars.
“Good?” His voice was rough, just a low growl. Mel had never heard him sound like that. She didn’t trust her voice not to shake so she just nodded, her head bumping his.
His fingers felt so much bigger and longer and thicker than her own, and much more skilled. It was like he already knew how to work her; he watched her facial expressions intently and then repeated the movements that worked. She ground into his fingers a little, matching his rhythm.
Of course he was good at this. Langdon, who always saw everything as a challenge, as something to excel at, who always preferred the most complicated cases, who always had the steadiest of hands when he worked on his patients no matter how stressful the situation. Of course he would be good at this, too.
“Don’t stop,” she demanded, her desire making her feel bold.
“I won’t stop. That’s it. That’s it, good girl,” he said soothingly when he hit a sweet spot and she moaned, from both his touch and his words. His voice was heavy and warm, like butter. It made her feel safe, instead of tense and embarrassed.
Then he added, a little sharper this time: “You can come for me, Mel sweetheart, can’t you?”
And she could, surprisingly quickly; between one beat and the next her orgasm crested and then broke like a wave over her; the pleasure all-consuming. She pulsed around his fingers as she clung to him, moaning, muscles trembling, mind wiped clean.
Vaguely, she registered how he pulled out his fingers and then put them in his mouth after her grip on him relaxed; licking them and looking directly into her eyes as he did so. She swallowed, trying to come up with something intelligent to say and failing spectacularly.
“That was – that was …,” was all she could say, her voice hoarse and slurred and ruined. There was no way to describe what she was feeling. She’d forgotten every single word in the English language. It had never felt like this with anyone, ever.
“That good, huh?” Langdon teased, laughing. There was something else in his expression, something tender, there and gone very quickly,
She didn’t even bother answering, just reached up and pulled him down so he was sort of half on top of her again, his body even warmer than before. She lightly dragged her hand across his scalp, through his soft, dark hair and she could feel him shudder against her. She was suddenly so tired, so sleepy.
“Don’t you want to stay over?” she mumbled into the crook of his neck.
He hesitated. “I shouldn’t.” His voice sounded strained and far-away. “Sleep, and I’ll see you tomorrow at work.” He kissed her temple, light as a feather, pulling the covers over her.
She wanted to protest, but her protests died on her lips as, for the first time in weeks, a deep sleep finally, fully overtook her.
***
The next day, Mel woke up feeling refreshed for the first time in forever. She vaguely wondered why, and then it all hit her at once. What she had done the night before. With Langdon. Where his fingers had been. How he had kissed her. How he had licked his fingers.
Mel sat straight up in bed, hands over her mouth. She was half-naked and her underwear was on the floor, along with her scrubs. The muscles in her legs ached, she felt sticky and sore between her legs, and her bedroom smelled vaguely of sex – of her. It also smelled of him; of cigarette smoke and the expensive cologne he was always wearing that Santos loved to make fun of him for.
It had really happened. Frank Langdon had … fingered her and made her come. It felt like she should regret it; like this was something she should probably feel ashamed of.
But the truth was that she felt better than she had done in months. A bone-deep satisfaction that she now knew apparently only came from a good orgasm. A very good orgasm. She couldn’t bring herself to regret it, even if she sort of dreaded seeing Langdon at work.
***
When she saw him later that day for the first time, it was when they were doing rounds with the rest of the day shift and she couldn’t exactly talk to him with all of their co-workers around them. Gossip notoriously spread like wildfire in the Pitt. But she watched him; watched his hands as he popped gum in his mouth, as he gesticulated when he was describing something. She looked at his fingers and a little dazedly thought about how they’d been inside her. It still didn’t feel quite real.
She finally ran into him, standing alone by the lockers, eating an apple. He looked very tired.
“Hey,” she said.
He looked up at her, smiling, but there was something slightly guarded about his expression
“Hey yourself.” He cleared his throat, leaned against his locker and looked at her a bit more closely, up and down. “How are you feeling?”
“Good,” she said. “Very good. Very … um. Relaxed.”
His smile widened. “Well, I’m glad. That it worked.”
“Yeah. I … I just wanted to say thank you.”
He hummed. “Don’t mention it. It was my pleasure. I owed you one, remember?”
She stared at him, mouth open, but before she could come up with anything else to say Robby walked up to them, mentioning something about an old patient of Langdon’s, effectively ending the conversation.
***
They didn’t talk about it again, and in the days and weeks that followed, Mel tried masturbating on her own, but quickly realized it wasn’t the same without Langdon.
A part of her, a part that grew increasingly bigger every day, wanted to ask him to do it again, but she didn’t know how he would react. Getting rejected would be embarrassing.
She thought about how Langdon was the first real friend she had had in a long time. Maybe ever. She didn’t want to screw that up.
Still, she couldn’t stop thinking about it.
One night, when they were charting together in the middle of central, he looked at her tired face, taking in the dark circles under her eyes.
“How’s your sleep these days?”
“Not good.”
“No?”
“No.” Mel took a deep breath, then lowered her voice because there were people around them. “I tried, without you.” She looked him directly in the eye, even though doing so made her feel incredibly nervous. “I … I thought about you when I did it.” She blushed. “But it wasn’t the same.”
“Fuck,” he said, immediately clocking her meaning, voice a little choked, looking away from her quickly.
“Could you … could we do it again?” she asked boldly.
He didn’t answer right away, his jaw and throat working as he swallowed.
“Of course we can,” he said, voice low and just for her.
“Yeah?” She brightened. “You’re sure you want to?”
He laughed. “Yes, Mel. I’m sure.”
***
Mel didn’t even know what to call it. Their arrangement. Friends with benefits? Fuck buddies? What did normal people usually call these things? She had no one to talk with about it, even though she yearned to ask someone, maybe Samira, what they would make of her and Langdon’s relationship.
They never really talked about it at work. He just came home with her after their shift and made her come; his voice low and encouraging in her ears as he got her off. Sometimes he used his lips and tongue along with his fingers. Mel liked those times the best. Then he tucked her in and drove home to his apartment.
He’d gotten good at knowing what she liked, where he should or shouldn’t touch her. Mel suspected he now knew her better than she knew herself.
He always looked a little tired the next day and she felt a little guilty. Now she was sleeping well, but he wasn’t. He lived a long way from her and had to drive all that way every night.
They still did movie night with Becca every Friday, and it was as if nothing had changed. They had dinner, watched Elf, then talked on the couch, and then he went home.
But something had changed. Irreparably. Mel found herself looking at him differently. Like when he was chopping vegetables for lasagna or when he was examining a patient, she found herself looking at his hands and she blushed thinking about where those fingers had been. What they did to her almost every night, now. Sometimes he’d catch her looking and she knew that he knew what she was thinking.
She could also feel her emotions shifting. She felt closer to him than she had before; more attached, more vulnerable.
Sometimes he pulled her closer, after. Just for a moment, while she was catching her breath, muscles still trembling from the force of her orgasm. She could tell he was hard, could feel his erection pressed against her thigh or back. His reaction was only natural, Mel figured. Even if he only thought of her as a friend, it was a perfectly normal biological reaction. It didn’t mean that he wanted her.
Sometimes she asked if he wanted to stay over, but he always said no. She had tried, awkwardly, one time, to ask if he wanted her to … return the favor. He turned her down gently but immediately, which had hurt her feelings. She never asked him that question again. If he didn’t feel the same way for her as she did for him, that was okay, she figured. Right? She could live with that. At least she was finally sleeping; all night, without tossing and turning, without her mind going around in circles.
But the problem now was that whenever she dreamed, which was every night, she dreamed of Langdon.
***